An increase in information, products, and services offered through the Internet, as well as dramatic growth in the number and types of consumers using the Internet, has led to a dramatic growth in advertisers promoting their goods and services through the Internet. Advertisers may pay publishers to host or sponsor their advertisements on Web pages, search engines, browsers, or other online media. Additionally, the emergence of wireless technologies may be creating unique opportunities for wireless carriers, advertisers, and publishers to generate additional revenue streams through new and existing mobile phone customers.
Publishers may charge the advertisers on a “per click” basis, meaning the publishers may charge the advertisers each time one of their advertisements is clicked-on by a user viewing the advertisement. The “per click” payment method, however, may be susceptible to click fraud. Click fraud occurs when a non-legitimate click is entered or detected. For example, a script or other software agent may be configured to repeatedly click on an advertisement, artificially driving up the per-click payments and resulting in an advertiser being charged for a large number of fraudulent clicks that were not entered by a legitimate user.
To address the potential for click fraud, click-based advertisement models may employ click fraud detection systems to identify “valid” or legitimate clicks. The publisher may then only charge the advertiser for the valid clicks. One such system has been disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/789,729 filed Apr. 25, 2007, entitled “System for Scoring Click Traffic.” Other click fraud detection models may be designed to recognize excessive clicks originating from a single internet protocol (IP) address. These click fraud detection systems are directed to online, web-based click fraud schemes.
Existing click fraud detection models developed for online, wire-based systems may not be adequate for the wireless carrier environment. For example, a click fraud detection model based on excessive clicks from a single IP address may inappropriately flag as invalid a mobile carrier's IP gateway where the gateway routes a multitude of mobile device users through a single, finite, or limited number of IP addresses.